Dr. Alberto Cambrosio

Biography

(PhD, University of Montreal, 1984).Professor, at McGill University since 1990. Professor Cambrosio's area of expertise lies at the crossroads of medical sociology and the sociology of science and technology. His work focuses on the “material culture” of biomedical practices, and in particular on the study of the application of modern biological techniques to the diagnosis and the therapy of cancer, the comparative (North-America - Europe) development of cancer clinical trials, and the role of visual imagery in the development of immunology. He is especially concerned, in how biomedicine has come to grips with the multiple and ubiquitous cultural, social and practical differences and variations with which it is increasingly confronted. More in particular, he is interested in the creation of institutions and instruments to manage these differences and generate consensus, however partial or temporary in nature, and thus with the social and historical dynamics of biomedical regulation, objectification and standardization.   

Research Interest

Professor Cambrosio’s most recent project (supported by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Fonds Québécois de Recherchesur la Société et la Culture and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research) examines ‘genomics in action’, i.e., as applied to concrete instances of medical work, by investigating public, academic and commercial programs that capitalize on the therapeutic insights offered by the new molecular genetics of cancer.His most recent book (Cancer on Trial: Oncology as a New Style of Practice, in press, co-authored with Peter Keating) argues that, contrary to common assumptions, clinical trials do not boil down to mere “technology” or a few methodological principles: rather, they are an institution that corresponds to a profound transformation of biomedical activities. They rise to the level of a “new style of practice”, insofar as they generate novel, distinctive ways of producing and assessing medical knowledge. As such, they signal a collective turn in medical research (via large-scale networks of clinical researchers) that reorders the relations between private and public institutions, establishes new interfaces between research laboratories and clinical settings (and, most recently, biotech companies) and redefines the relation between patients and medical practitioners.